If you’re going to be forced from your job in disgrace after leading a giant international media firm into a national scandal, this is the way to do it.

Rebekah Brooks, the former News Corp. executive who is facing numerous charges over alleged criminality related to Britain’s telephone hacking scandal, received a payoff of $17 million when she was finally dumped by Rupert Murdoch in July 2011.

BothThe Guardian and the Financial Timesreported that the payment – at least $6 million higher than had been previously reported — was disclosed by NI Group Ltd, the UK holding company for The Sun and Times newspapers. It says an unnamed director [Brooks] received £10.852 million as “compensation for loss of office”. That money includes “various ongoing benefits” – including the funding for an office and staff in London for two years.

It also disclosed that Brooks’s legal costs will be paid for by the company. According to the FT, ongoing benefits for Brooks include “reimbursement for all legal and other professional costs incurred with ongoing investigations until those investigations are completed. The company also agreed to pay the tax associated with the legal and other professional costs.”

That could get pricey. The Guardian says Brooks is facing three sets of charges related to the hacking scandal, which came to light when it was revealed some News Corp. papers regularly hacked into private voicemails in search of stories. It reports:

She has been accused of conspiring with her husband, Charlie, and others to pervert the course of justice and frustrate an investigation by the Metropolitan police into the publisher.

She is also facing two charges in relation to conspiring to intercept the voicemails of individuals, including the mobile phone of a missing teenager, the revelation of which set off the scandal. She is also facing a charge in relation to corrupt payments allegedly made to a former Ministry of Defence official for stories, alongside the Sun’s former chief reporter John Kay.

The hacking scandal has shaken Murdoch’s UK empire. The BBC reports more than 4,000 people have been identified by police as possible victims of phone hacking by the News of the World, which Murdoch closed as a result of the scandal. It has toppled James Murdoch from his perch as heir apparent, let to prosecutions related to hundreds of cases, and prompted an inquiry into “the culture, practices and ethics” of the British press and its relationships with police and politicians. Amongh targets of the hacking attempts were “politicians, celebrities, actors, sports people, relatives of dead UK soldiers and people who were caught up in the 2007 London bombings.”

In the year to June 30 2012, according to the Financial Times, Murdoch’s British tabloid division incurred one-off costs of £46.6 million, in addition to the £160 million writedown for closing the News of the World.

Almost a quarter of the £46m in charges resulted from the payoff to Brooks, it said. Imagine what she’d have gotten if she’d actually done a good job.

Perhaps Rupert Murdoch’s fantastic success as a businessman and entrepreneur springs from his ability to simplify.

Murdoch media properties specialize in simplification. The Sun, the popular British tabloid that was fundamental to his early success in the newspaper business, can reduce the most complicated of subjects to a few one-syllable words on its front page. Fox News, which helped cement his entry into the U.S., offers succinct, straightforward views for people who have already made up their minds. The world in Murdoch publications is a clear-cut place where everyone has their niche: bent politicians, lazy welfare cheats, untrustworthy foreigners, dubious religious zealots, hedonistic celebrities and dodgy cops. You don’t turn to a Murdoch property, either print or broadcast, to learn anything. You do it to confirm your views and laugh at the foibles of others.

Murdoch says anyone wondering where his own opinions lie should read The Sun. Not the Times of London or the Wall Street Journal, which he also owns, where difficult issues are explored in depth, but The Sun, where the world would be a much better place if only someone would drop more bombs on some mullahs. His testimony this week before a panel investigating the phone-hacking scandal that has turned his News Corp. empire inside out, bears out this claim. In his view, the scandal — which Murdoch says has already cost him hundreds of millions of dollars — comes down to a “cover-up” at the News of the World masterminded by a slick lawyer who was a drinking buddy with some of the hired help.

“There were one or two very strong characters there, who I think had been there many, many, many years and were friends with the journalists – or the person I’m thinking of was a friend of the journalists, drinking pal, and was a clever lawyer, and … there had been statements reporting that this person forbade people to go and report to Mrs [Rebekah] Brooks or to James [Murdoch],” he added.
… “I think the senior executives … and I were all misinformed and shielded from anything that was going on there, and I do blame one or two people for that, who perhaps I shouldn’t name, because for all I know they may be arrested yet, but there’s no question in my mind that maybe even the editor, but certainly beyond that someone took charge of a cover-up, which we were victim to and I regret.”

You see how simple it all is? The phone-hacking scandal took years to work its way to the surface of public consciousness, and only got there largely because a rival London publication, The Guardian, insisted on burrowing away at it in the face of overwhelming public apathy and determined News Corp. efforts to halt its spread. Initially the Murdoch team pretended it was all a triviality. Then they blamed a single “rogue” reporter. Then they sought to buy off victims, including one payoff so immense it only served to attract more attention. Then Murdoch peremptorily closed the News of the World, where the scandal began. When none of that was enough, he began sacrificing allies and associates, including, most recently his son James.

All that, Mr. Murdoch maintains now, due to a “clever lawyer” who managed to hide the facts from him and his team, who of course would have acted immediately to put a stop to the law-breaking if only they’d been better informed. The guy must have been pretty smart eh? To manipulate an empire the size of News Corp from somewhere deep within the corridors of a single publication, without anyone anywhere catching on? To make Rupert Murdoch a “victim”. And to keep his nefarious scheme going despite all the intense efforts to ferret it out once more senior executives finally caught wind of what was up? Who is this guy?

It appears it’s probably Tom Crone, formerly a lawyer at the News of the World. Crone certainly thinks he’s the one Murdoch was referring to, and he issued a statement dismissing the charge as balderdash.

“Since Rupert Murdoch’s evidence today about a lawyer who had been on the News of the World for many years can only refer to me, I am issuing the following statement,” he said.
“His assertion that I ‘took charge of a cover-up’ in relation to phone-hacking is a shameful lie. The same applies to his assertions that I misinformed senior executives about what was going on and that I forbade people from reporting to [former News International chief executive] Rebekah Brooks or to [ex chairman] James Murdoch,” Crone added.
“It is perhaps no coincidence that the two people he has identified in relation to his cover-up allegations are the same two people who pointed out that his son’s evidence to the parliamentary select committee last year was inaccurate.”

Crone could be a pivotal figure in the tale, because he says he informed James Murdoch in 2008 that the scandal went beyond a single rogue reporter. That claim undermines the whole Murdoch defence. If James Murdoch knew the truth in 2008, he had no excuse for failing to act. And the testimony given by James and his father — that they had no idea what was going on because no one ever told them — becomes about as believable as a News of the World headline. So eviscerating Crone’s credibility would greatly help the Murdoch side. If only people believed it.

Mr. Murdoch also played the humility card, claiming he “panicked” when he decided to shut the News of the World (a decision he made in the time it takes to snap your fingers, he said). He’s sorry for the innocent folks who lost their jobs, though he’s happy he closed the place and wishes he’d done it sooner. (How you can hold both those views at the same time is another example of the flexibility required to be a billionaire media mogul. Look, I’m really sorry I fired you for no reason. Too bad I didn’t do it before.) He says he failed in not seizing on the imprtance of the scandal earlier. And he maintains he never asked a single favour of all the prime ministers he’s held in his pocket over the years (as if there was no other way to get what he wanted from them other than personally asking Tony Blair or David Cameron).

One of his biggest errors, he said, was letting himself be swayed by high-priced legal beagles, who influenced his failure to believe News of the World reporter Clive Goodman — who was jailed early in the scandal — when he claimed lots of people at the paper besides himself knew about the phone hacking.

“I should have thrown all the lawyers out of the place and seen Mr Goodman one on one and cross-examined him myself and made up my mind, maybe rightly or wrongly, was he telling the truth? And if I had come to the conclusion that he was telling the truth, I’d have gone in and torn the place apart and we wouldn’t be here today,” he added.

Sun readers would know instinctively that fancy lawyers can’t be trusted. It’s all very simple and straightforward. It’s Mr. Murdoch’s misfortune that the real world doesn’t always view life as simplistically as The Sun.

LONDON — James Murdoch blamed subordinates on Tuesday for keeping him in the dark about illegal behavior when he ran his father Rupert’s U.K. newspaper empire, and said he didn’t closely read its ill-fated tabloid the News of the World.

The 39-year-old, once seen as the clear heir apparent to his father’s News Corp business, was grilled at a high-profile judicial inquiry into Britain’s press culture, set up in the wake of revelations that the News of the World illegally hacked into phone messages on an industrial scale to get scoops.

The inquiry, ordered by Prime Minister David Cameron, will also examine the relationship between the Murdochs and politicians to establish whether these close ties helped journalists feel above the law.

Australian-born Rupert Murdoch, 81, who has seen the scandal erode the formidable political influence he wielded in Britain for four decades, is scheduled to appear before the inquiry on Wednesday and Thursday.

Related

Investigations into the scandal have focused on what James Murdoch knew about the illegal phone hacking, especially when he agreed to a large payout to settle a legal claim.

He has consistently maintained that the paper’s management failed to alert him to the scale of the problem.

“Knowing what we know now about the culture at the News of the World in 2006, and from what we know about the alleged widespread nature of these poor practices, then it must have been cavalier about risk and that is a matter of huge regret,” James Murdoch told a packed courtroom.

He was driven into London’s Royal Courts of Justice past a bank of photographers and broadcast trucks, to testify under oath in an inquiry which has gripped the British public.

Asked if he read the weekly News of the World, he said “I wouldn’t say I read all of it,” and asked about its daily sister paper, the Sun, he said he had “tried to familiarize myself with what was in it”.

The two papers were the biggest sellers in Britain before the Murdochs shut the News of the World at the height of the scandal last year. They have since replaced the News of the World with a Sunday edition of the Sun.

“I wasn’t in the business of deciding what to put in the newspapers,” Murdoch said.

James Murdoch has spent most of his career in pay-television. He was new to the newspaper business when dealing with the phone hacking fallout, unlike his father who long had a reputation for pulling the strings at papers that boasted their endorsements decided the outcome of elections.

Media consultant Steve Hewlett, who has been closely following the inquiry, said of James Murdoch’s testimony: “His lack of engagement with the nuts and bolts of what the business was actually about – i.e. journalism and content – is quite remarkable. I’m not saying it’s not genuine but it’s quite remarkable.”

James Murdoch became chairman of News International in 2007 when he took on the wider job of leading his father Rupert’s News Corp in Asia and Europe.

He has argued that the newspaper division was merely a small part of the job and that he could not have been expected to know about the criminality at the title.

Senior managers at the paper have said they informed him of the scope of the problem in an e-mail while they were negotiating a legal settlement, but he says he never read it in full.

In five months, the inquiry has already taken a wide-ranging and discomfiting look at press ethics and journalists’ dealings with politicians and the police.

James Murdoch is also facing questions about meetings with ministers while they considered letting the Murdochs take full control of broadcaster BSkyB, including a Christmas drinks party he attended with Prime Minister David Cameron.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/james-murdoch-testifies-that-subordinates-kept-him-in-dark-about-phone-hacking/feed3stdA video grab from pooled footage taken inside the Leveson Inquiry shows former News International executive chairman James Murdoch giving evidence at the Leveson Inquiry into press standards at the High Court in London on April 24, 2012.Scandal-plagued James Murdoch stepping down as chairman of BSkyBhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/scandal-plagued-james-murdoch-stepping-down-as-chairman-of-bskyb
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/scandal-plagued-james-murdoch-stepping-down-as-chairman-of-bskyb#commentsTue, 03 Apr 2012 12:48:03 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=157970

LONDON — BSkyB non-executive Chairman James Murdoch, under fire over his handling of a phone hacking scandal, is to step down from his role at Britain’s dominant pay-TV company, the group’s news channel reported on Tuesday.

A spokesman for BSkyB declined to comment on the report, which said that Murdoch would step down after a board meeting later on Tuesday.

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: Like Soviet officials who fell out of favour in communist Moscow, News Corp. executives keep getting erased from the picture. The latest to go is Rupert Murdoch’s son and presumed heir, James, who finally fell victim to the still growing disaster of the phone-hacking scandal.

Students at business schools will pore over the evidence, wondering how the Dirty Digger could have missed so many opportunities to stop the rot. The scandal has ballooned from the activities of the infamous “single rogue reporter” at the News of the World to allegations of espionage and bribery of public officials on an “industrial scale” at The Sun.

The numbers of those in the know is also expanding: James Murdoch, the former heir-apparent and third most senior News Corp. executive, is the highest up to lose his job, following Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson out of the door. Of course, it wasn’t put like that: he’s been moved to new responsibilities far away from the newspaper division. Coulson and Brooks are not so lucky: they were eased out and could face criminal charges.

Now questions are being raised about the role of Rupert himself — Is he a fit and proper person to run a publicly traded company?

Tim Willis, a contributor to CNN, says the Murdochs hope sacrificing James will be enough to placate British politicians and legalists, not to mention News Corp. shareholders.

Judging by his evidence to the parliamentary inquiry into the “industrial-scale” hacking of innocent parties’ phones by the News of the World and The Sun — over which he presided, as executive chairman of their publisher, News International — [James Murdoch] appears to have suffered so bad a case of amnesia that it’s a miracle he even remembered his own name.
[But] his I-don’t-know-nuthin’ stance was becoming untenable. Even the News of the World’s ex-lawyer has pointed the finger at him, and it can only be a matter of time until hard proof of his complicity in either the hacking or its coverup becomes apparent.
At another level, it can be seen as a PR move: Let the parliamentarians think they’ve got a scalp; and let the public and shareholders think there’s a new broom in News International’s Augean stable.

However, Kevin Anderson at the First Post believes just moving James Murdoch won’t do the trick.

[T]his scandal is like the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland: No one knows how deep it goes. What started as a accusations of phone hacking has now spread to computer hacking, but that is not the end to the explosive allegations …
It’s hard to think of a way that the Murdochs can easily draw a line under such a high-profile affair, especially as it continues to unfold. There are more witnesses yet to speak at the Leveson inquiry [into British media standards — a new oyxmoron?] and the possibility of future explosive revelations cannot be ruled out. The Financial Times says that it may be up to a year before the full extent of the exposure the company faces from the scandals is known. Until then, the Murdochs will be left trying to simply contain the blaze rather than have a hope of putting out the flames.

I see the story from now onwards as the hunting down and cornering of Rupert Murdoch himself. It is well understood that the ethos of organizations is established by the founders and by those who follow them as leaders. In the case of News Corp., Mr. Murdoch did indeed inherit the original business from his father. It was a small, Australian newspaper group. Nonetheless, News Corp. is Rupert Murdoch. He has single-handedly built it up. Nothing important takes place without his approval. He runs it his way.
From which it follows that if the successes have been his alone, so have the failures. The disgraceful scandals that now tumble out daily are Mr Murdoch’s doing. He is famously hands-on …
The triumphs are his — and so are the evil practices that we now see so clearly. He won’t retire, but he will be removed.

Peter Preston, a columnist at The Daily Telegraph, is another who thinks the senior Murdoch is also on the way out.

Rupert Murdoch … insists that he never had any knowledge of wrongdoing, and no doubt that is true. But he was the man at the top. He took a very keen interest in the way his British newspapers were run (a newspaperman to his fingertips, last weekend he could be seen hard at work in the newsroom as the Sun on Sunday was launched) and it was he, and nobody else, who set the culture …
Murdoch’s culture, we now know for a fact, included the criminal culture at the News of the World. We have also heard the corruption allegations from [Metropolitan police deputy assistant commissioner] Sue Akers concerning the Sun. Of course nothing has been proved, but if even half of what she says turns out to be true, then it is time to ask whether Rupert Murdoch is a fit and proper person to run not just a newspaper, but any British public company.

NEW YORK — News Corp. said Wednesday that James Murdoch has stepped down as executive chairman of News International, the Rupert Murdoch-owned company’s troubled British publishing unit.

News International has been embroiled in a phone-hacking scandal which has seen the arrests of several former top editors and the abrupt closure last year of the News of the World.

The New York-based media-entertainment giant said James Murdoch was stepping down from News International following his relocation to company headquarters in New York as deputy chief operating officer.

“Now that he has moved to New York, James will continue to assume a variety of essential corporate leadership mandates, with particular focus on important pay-TV businesses and broader international operations,” Rupert Murdoch, James’ father and the chairman and chief executive of News Corp., said in a statement.

“We are all grateful for James’ leadership at News International and across Europe and Asia, where he has made lasting contributions to the group’s strategy in paid digital content and its efforts to improve and enhance governance programs,” Rupert Murdoch said.

“He has demonstrated leadership and continues to create great value at Star TV, Sky Deutschland, Sky Italia, and BSkyB.”

James Murdoch said that with the “successful launch of The Sun on Sunday and new business practices in place across all titles, News International is now in a strong position to build on its successes in the future.

“As deputy chief operating officer, I look forward to expanding my commitment to News Corporation’s international television businesses and other key initiatives across the company,” he said.

Tom Mockridge will remain as chief executive of News International and will report to News Corp. president and chief operating officer Chase Carey.

News Corp. has settled dozens of claims brought by victims of phone-hacking by the News of the World, including a US$952,000 (710,000-euro) deal with singer Charlotte Church agreed on Monday.

A public inquiry into press standards heard from a top police officer Monday that journalists at The Sun had a “network of corrupted officials” who provided them with stories in return for cash payments.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers told the inquiry that the tabloid had a “culture” of paying police, the military, health workers, government and prison staff.

Things are looking decidedly unrosy for James Murdoch, son of Rupert and dauphin to the throne of the News Corp. empire.

If you quit following the hacking scandal in Britain after the closure of the News of the World and revelations about the widespread phone and computer hacking that went on within Murdoch’s British newspaper business, you’ve been missing a lot of drama. Someone up high is going to be blamed for what happened, and it sure looks like it’s going to be James, despite the best lawyers, spinners, crisis managers and PR flacks the Murdoch billions can by.

James has been insisting all along that he knew nothing about the hacking, other than a few details about one “rogue” reporter. That position was decidedly weakened on Monday when he sent a letter to a UK select committee investigating the scandal, admitting he’d been sent an e-mail b y the News of the World editor three years with a warning that hacking was “rife” and the legal situation “as bad as we feared”. Murdoch says he got the email on the weekend, read it on his BlackBerry and didn’t read past the opening lines, thereby missing the important bit. Whether that would be enough to get him off the hook (as head of British operations, isn’t it his responsibility anyway, even if he wasn’t doing a good job of reading his mail?), but the company’s former chief legal official says he told Mr. Murdoch face-to-face that there were serious hacking issues, and showed him an email referring to them.

Britain’s The Telegraph says James could be facing RICO charges under the U.S. anti-racketeering laws. The New York Times’ David Carr compares his defence to Wile E Coyote, the Roadrunner character who spends each episode hurtling over cliffs and crashing to the ground.

The problem is less about business management than preserving Mr. Murdoch’s credibility as a leader. Chris Bryant, a Labour member of Parliament, did not mince words in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek: “James Murdoch is slipshod as a manager and News International have been slippery with their evidence to Parliament. The rogue reporter line was a lie, and News International knew it.”

He concludes:

Whether in responding to the police, Parliament or the press, Mr. Murdoch is out of sacrificial lambs and now in custody of an ugly-looking set of facts. As Wile E. Coyote once told Bugs Bunny, “We both know very well that there is nothing left in the bag.”

LONDON — James Murdoch has resigned as a director of several British newspapers including The Sun and The Times, documents and sources said Wednesday, in the latest shake-up at his father Rupert’s empire.

But despite facing pressure over the phone-hacking scandal at the now-defunct News of the World tabloid, James remains overall chairman of News International, the British newspaper arm of U.S.-based News Corporation.

According to documents filed at Company House, Britain’s main register of companies, in late September, James stepped down as director of News Group Newspapers Limited, publisher of The Sun, and Times Newspapers Limited, which operates The Times and Sunday Times.

The Sun tabloid is the biggest-selling newspaper in Britain, while The Times is an upmarket daily.

A source close to News Corp. confirmed the details, but rejected suggestions that James Murdoch’s resignation leant weight to speculation that the company is planning to sell off its British newspapers.

The source said the fact that he was staying in the “juicy” role of News International chairman, and also remaining on the editorial board of Times Newspapers, showed the company’s commitment to its U.K. interests.

His resignation was partly because he was required to spend more time in the United States because of his appointment earlier this year as deputy chief operating officer of News Corp, the source added.

News Group was the publisher of the News of the World, which was shut down in July amid a stream of allegations about the illegal hacking of voicemails.

James Murdoch’s position as his father’s heir apparent has appeared increasingly shaky in recent months, and he faces a vote on whether he should continue as chairman of pay TV giant BSkyB on November 29.

Earlier this month he appeared before a committee of British lawmakers, where he rejected claims that he was like a “mafia boss” and denied misleading them about the extent of his knowledge of hacking at the News of the World.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/james-murdoch-quits-as-director-of-major-u-k-newspapers-documents-show/feed1stdJames Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch and Chairman and Chief Executive of News Corporation, Europe and Asia, looks on during the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference at HVB Forum on January 25, 2011 in Munich, Germany. According to reports, November 23, 2011 Mr Murdoch has resigned as the director of the companies that publish The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun.Phone hack 'made parents think murdered girl was alive'http://news.nationalpost.com/news/phone-hack-made-parents-think-murdered-girl-was-alive
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/phone-hack-made-parents-think-murdered-girl-was-alive#respondMon, 21 Nov 2011 15:10:38 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=111357

by Danny Kemp

LONDON — The parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler told Britain’s phone-hacking inquiry Monday they thought she was still alive after the News of the World tabloid deleted some of her messages.

Sally Dowler described how she told her husband “She’s picked up her voicemails Bob, she’s alive!” after an investigator working for the tabloid erased some of the 13-year-old’s voicemails following her disappearance.

The Dowlers were the first victims of illegal hacking by the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper to testify to the televised hearing in London chaired by a senior judge, and were to be followed later by Hollywood star Hugh Grant.

The News of the World, Britain’s top-selling Sunday newspaper, was shut down amid public revulsion after revelations about the hacking of Milly’s phone emerged in July.

Related

The Dowlers sat beside Grant at the hearing, before taking the stand and telling the inquiry that after Milly went missing in March 2002 they initially checked her voicemails “all the time”.

At first, a recorded message left by their daughter before her disappearance would come up, but the voicemail box soon became full and an automatic message would play instead, Sally Dowler said.

But one day, she added, her voice rising with emotion: “I rang her phone and it went on to her voicemail. So I heard her voice, and it was just like I jumped, ’She’s picked up her voicemails Bob, she’s alive!’”

In fact, Milly had been abducted and was later found murdered. British serial killer Levi Bellfield was convicted of her murder in June this year.

As well as listening to Milly’s voicemails, TheNews of the World’s private detective Glenn Mulcaire erased some messages to make room for new ones.

Mulcaire was jailed along with The News of the World’s former royal editor Clive Goodman in January 2007 after they admitted intercepting voicemail messages left on phones belonging to royal aides.

Sally Dowler said that earlier this year, when they were told by police about the hacking of their daughter’s phone, “the first thing I thought” was about the deletion of the messages.

“As soon as I was told it was about phone hacking, literally I didn’t sleep for about three nights because you replay everything in your mind and just think, ’oh, that makes sense now, that makes sense’.”

The couple also described how the newspaper intruded on their grief by using a picture of them retracing Milly’s route when she was abducted.

Sally Dowler also said that for the British press, the inquiry was an “opportunity to do things right in future and have some decent standards.”

Separately Graham Shear, who is the solicitor for England footballer Ashley Cole and previously represented actor Jude Law, told the inquiry that in 2008, paparazzi began to arrive at his house before his clients did for privately arranged meetings.

The hacking scandal led to the resignations of some of Murdoch’s key lieutenants, two of Britain’s top policemen and prompted Prime Minister David Cameron to set up the Leveson inquiry into the standards of the British press.

Grant, the star of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, is expected to say that press intrusion is making the life of the mother of his child a misery.

The actor is expected to condemn paparazzi for hounding Chinese actress Hong Tinglan, the mother of his baby daughter, who was recently granted a High Court injunction prohibiting harassment of her and the child.

Lord Justice Brian Leveson’s inquiry will hear this week from other alleged victims of media intrusion, including actress Sienna Miller, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and Gerry McCann, the father of the missing Madeleine McCann.

Leveson has made it clear that the inquiry will hear evidence that The News of the World was not the only newspaper engaging in harassment.

LONDON — James Murdoch turned on his former News of the World colleagues on Thursday as he fought to survive a second grilling over phone-hacking by British lawmakers and keep his place in his father’s media empire.

Murdoch blamed Colin Myler, the last editor of the now-defunct Sunday tabloid, for giving him incomplete information, and accused the newspaper’s ex-legal chief, Tom Crone, of misleading the committee of MPs investigating the hacking.

“This was the job of the new editor who had come in… to clean things up, to make me aware of those things,” said Murdoch, appearing confident under interrogation by lawmakers even when compared by MP Tom Watson to a Mafia boss.

He also said Crone had ordered the surveillance of public figures by the News of the World — revelations of which have further damaged the company this week.

The News Corp-owned News of the World was revealed this year to have run an industrial-scale operation to hack into the phones of murder victims including schoolgirl Milly Dowler as well as celebrities and politicians.

Previously, News Corp had maintained the hacking was the work of a lone, “rogue” royal reporter, Clive Goodman, and private detective Glenn Mulcaire. Both went to jail for the offence in 2007.

In 2008, James Murdoch approved a payoff of about 750,000 pounds ($1.2 million) to hacking victim and soccer boss Gordon Taylor, who had in his possession an email of hacking transcripts appearing to show the hacking went beyond Goodman.

He reiterated to MPs on Thursday that he had approved the unusually large payoff only because he was following legal advice, and not because he knew the so-called “for Neville” email could implicate other journalists.

“I was given sufficient information and only sufficient information to authorise the increase of the settlement offered, that Mr Crone and Mr. Myler had already eagerly been increasing in order to achieve a settlement even before it had come across my desk,” he said.

Murdoch reiterated on Thursday that Myler and Crone had not shown him the “for Neville” email. He denied that he had misled parliament in his previous testimony.

James Murdoch was brought into News International after the date of the last known phone-hacking, but has been accused of failing to ask the right questions at least, and possibly of participating in a huge corporate cover-up.

He is currently deputy chief operating officer of News Corp with responsibility for all its non-U.S. business, and was until recently expected to take over sooner or later from his father, Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch.

He is also still chairman of News International, News Corp’s British newspaper arm.

An admission by News International this week that the News of the World ordered the surveillance of lawyers representing hacking victims and others as recently as this year have added to the impression that the culture may not have changed much.

Murdoch said the members of the committee of MPs had also been surveillance targets of the newspaper, and apologised “unreservedly” to Watson, one of the targets.

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: Just when you thought the bottom had been reached in terms of sleaze, the Murdochs unveil unplumbed depths of grunge in their business practices.

An ex-cop turned private detective says he was hired by News International executives to follow Prince William in the hopes of catching him in flagrante something. Among other targets were Prince Harry’s girlfriend Chelsy Davy and the parents of Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe.

Derek Webb said he worked for the Murdochs for eight years. While much of the job focused on celebrities and politicians, it included trying dig up dirt on the lawyers representing victims of phone-hacking at the News of the World in hopes of discrediting them before the could unveil the truth about NOTW operations.

The revelations are perfectly timed to provide ammunition for British MPs. On Thursday, members of a parliamentary committee are due to question James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s heir-apparent, on his knowledge of goings-on at the paper. In his last appearance, James claimed he knew nothing or at best very little, leading to observers to wonder what exactly he got paid for.

Now the gloves are off. Reporting for Reuters, Peter Lauria and Kate Holton believe the younger Murdoch is about to face his day of reckoning.

According to company insiders, Murdoch family confidantes, analysts and industry observers, the committee’s success in pinning the widespread corruption that took place at News Corp’s British unit News International on James — or how deftly James deflects responsibility — will ultimately determine if he stays at News Corp as the likely successor to his father, Rupert …
Since July, the situation hasn’t improved for James. In fact, it has grown worse. His initial testimony was immediately contradicted by Colin Myler and Tom Crone, the former editor and former head of legal for the News of the World. Inquiries into other News Corp divisions are taking place in the United States. Moreover, a reporter for The Sun was recently arrested on suspicion of bribing police, suggesting that questionable practices spread beyond a lone “rogue” News of the World reporter to at least one other paper in the News Corp empire.

But it’s not a slam dunk. Stephen Glover at The Independent says MPs will have to do better in interrogating James this time around.

To judge by what happened in July, some of them might as well not have turned up, they were so feeble. A few – notably Labour MP Tom Watson – were more formidable, but even they lacked proper forensic skills … My fear is that its members will either feel obliged to plug away at a different line of questions to highlight their originality, or that they will have their own beside-the-point preoccupations …
We can only hope that the more competent interrogators (probably three or four of the 11 members) will concentrate on the simple point that James Murdoch seems to have known about the extent of hacking three years before he claims. Ask the same question a dozen different ways. Don’t be side-tracked by this weekend’s revelation that Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News International, received a pay-off of £1.7-million [$2.7-million] and various other goodies – inexcusable, but also largely irrelevant.

Writing in New York magazine, Gabriel Sherman says James’s troubles are a gift to his ambitious older sister Elizabeth, sidelined by her father’s male chauvinism.

Elisabeth Murdoch has always had to fight for her father’s attention, never easy in a family that was focused on the sons. Though she was the eldest of the three children from Rupert’s second marriage, Rupert had never taken her seriously as a possible contender to run the company some day. In 1997, he’d announced that in the competition, Lachlan was “first among equals,” and then, when Lachlan ran into troubles, he seemed to give James, now the deputy COO, the inside track …
The irony of the current conflict is that, until the phone-hacking scandal blew up, Liz and James had been the closest of the three siblings. They socialized together in London’s elite circle, imbibing the same ideas about where the culture was going and what News Corp. should become. They admired their father but shared a distaste for Rupert’s tabloid ventures, especially Fox News (even if James respected Fox’s nearly $1-billion profit). They had both grown to share the belief that News Corp. needed to shed its predatory, down-market image.

There may be legal consequences too. Scotland Yard officials have been investigating allegations that News Corp. journalists bribed police officers for information and illegally listened to voice mail messages left for members of the royal family, sports figures, celebrities and crime victims. Sixteen people have been arrested in the widening probe, including Rebekah Brooks, who had just resigned as chief of the company’s British newspaper unit.
James Murdoch could face criminal charges if police investigators determine he was involved in a conspiracy to cover up a crime …
“It’s kind of like watching ‘Dallas.’ [The Murdochs are] just after each other,” said Quentin J. Fleming, an adjunct professor at USC’s Marshall School of Business and author of Keep the Family Baggage Out of the Family Business.

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: The writing is on the wall for James Murdoch, until now seen as heir-apparent to Rupert, the family patriarch and ultimate survivor.

The slow leak of bad news about phone hacking at the News of the World on his watch turned to a gush last week. Lawyers for the family of Milly Dowling, the murdered teen whose phone messages were deleted by NoW hacks, confirmed they had reached a £3-million ($4.7-million) settlement with the company — the biggest payout so far in damages.

And there may be many more to come. The company has set aside £20-million ($32-million) to cover such payments, a sum deemed derisory by informed observers. James himself has been recalled by a British parliamentary committee probing the phone hacking after they heard other evidence contradicting his insistence he knew nothing.

Then there was the stormy News Corp annual general meeting in Los Angeles at which independent shareholders voted to turf James off the board. Although that may not seem like much of a rebuke, given the way voting rights are structured — the Murdochs own only 12% of the shares but control 40% of the votes — this was a great deal more than a slap on the wrist. In his blog, the BBC’s business editor Robert Peston notes,

The scale of the protest votes by independent shareholders against the re-election of James and Lachlan Murdoch to the News Corporation board was substantial.
About a third of votes were cast against them, with marginally more going against James Murdoch than against Lachlan Murdoch. But stripping out the votes of the Murdochs’ own shareholding, and those of a Saudi prince who backs the family, a majority voted against the sons of Rupert Murdoch.

Jeffrey Goldfarb at Reuters says while the Murdochs may have won the battle, they have effectively lost the war.

News Corp investors … signed up for the cold shoulder when they bought into a company with a lopsided dual-share structure and a board packed with the chairman’s cronies. Yet while their voices can be disregarded on technical grounds, they have spoken too loudly even for Murdoch to ignore.
Whether on his own or because of the influence of his closest advisers, Murdoch has slowly come around on the use of News Corp’s capital, distributing more of it these days to shareholders instead of on reckless acquisitions. He may be a stubborn and cagey tycoon. But the old newsman also has rolled the presses on enough exposés to know when the jig is up. That time has come for Murdoch’s board.

At the London Evening Standard, Roy Greenslade believes the younger Murdoch is simply not up to the job.

Why, in the face of the drip-drip-drip of revelations [at News of the World], did he fail to act decisively? Even if he was accepting internal denials by his executives, did he lack the street smarts to realize that there was something nasty in the Wapping woodshed after all?
Surely Rupert, a hands-on instinctual operator who I recall seeing through any form of dissembling by his executives, would have cottoned on.
By contrast, James’s corporate management style is more technocratic and remote. He delegates. Was he therefore predisposed to accept what he was told, or not told?
Clearly, many of News Corp’s shareholders take the view that James isn’t up to the job of being a board director, let alone the company chief.

Writing in The Guardian — which has broken many of the phone hacking stories — Dan Sabbagh says the Murdochs also face problem at the lucrative British broadcaster BSkyB, which they tried to take over, a plan derailed by the NoW scandal.

It had become the assumption that James Murdoch would take over from his father running News Corp, after four relatively successful years at BSkyB and a couple of nowhere-in-particular ones at the mothership in London before those phone-hacking allegations surfaced …
Of course, James Murdoch can say that he was at Sky when all the alleged phone hacking took place, but the fact remains that when the allegations of hacking first surfaced he presided over 18 months of denials. That may have changed now, but each additional allegation from the past nevertheless dents his credibility. Next month James has again been asked to explain himself before a committee of MPs. Giving endless testimony is no place for a corporate leader – next month Sky shareholders can reflect on what has happened this year when they decide whether to re-elect the 38-year-old as a director of the broadcaster.

LONDON — James Murdoch, the clear heir apparent to his father’s News Corp NWSA.O before a phone hacking scandal engulfed the company in July, is to return before the British parliament for further questioning in November.

Murdoch and his 80-year-old father Rupert appeared before the powerful parliamentary committee in July at the height of the drama, to discuss how journalists at their News of the World tabloid had hacked the phones of thousands of people to generate stories.

Since then, however, executives working below James Murdoch have contradicted his testimony over what he knew and when about the illegal activity, which has hammered the reputation and value of the company.

The statement came as Murdoch’s predecessor at the British newspaper arm, Les Hinton, appeared before the same committee for a second time, saying he had not been complicit in a cover up and that he had not realised the scale of the problem.

Asked by the committee if he was in any way complicit in letting untruths and misleading statements corrupt the truth, Hinton replied: “I don’t think I was complicit in what you were suggesting.”

“Looking back on it now, I will look forward to understanding exactly what did unfold and what we might have done that we did not.”

Hinton, the debonair executive who worked for Murdoch for more than 50 years before he resigned over the revelations in July, said he had not followed an internal investigation led by lawyers into the scandal and told parliamentarians on numerous occasions that he could not remember the answer to questions.

He also said he was very busy at the time with other areas of the business.

“For somebody who has worked for a news company for 50 years, you don’t have an enquiring mind,” one of the parliamentarians, Damian Collins, said.

Hinton retorted: “I didn’t think I was less enquiring than I needed to be at the time.”

LONDON – News International is expected to pay about £3-million ($4.7-million) to settle hacking claims by the family of murder victim Milly Dowler against the now defunct News of the World newspaper, sources close to the case said Monday.

The settlement is likely to involve close to a £2-million payment to the murdered schoolgirl’s family and a donation of at least £1-million pounds to charity.

News International and Mark Lewis, lawyer for the family, declined to comment.

LONDON – British lawmakers said Tuesday they will recall media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s son, James Murdoch, for a second grilling about phone hacking at the now defunct News of the World.

Murdoch, chairman of News Corp.’s British newspaper subsidiary News International, will face questions about allegations that he misled an earlier hearing when he denied that he knew hacking was widespread at the Sunday tabloid.

Parliament’s media committee grilled both Murdochs in a high-profile public hearing in July, and committee chairman John Whittingdale said Tuesday that James Murdoch would be asked back to answer some unresolved questions.

“The committee is beginning to reach the end of its deliberations, we’ve spent a lot of time on this, but there are still one or two loose ends that we want to tie up,” Whittingdale told Sky News television.

“As a final session we will have some more questions based on what we’ve heard which we’ll want to put to James Murdoch,” he added.

In his testimony in July, the 38-year-old Murdoch denied he had ever seen an email which appeared to prove that phone hacking at the News of the World was carried out by more than one rogue reporter and a private detective.

But his testimony has been contradicted by the tabloid’s former editor, Colin Myler, and its former legal manager, Tom Crone, who told the committee last week that they discussed the email with Murdoch during a meeting in 2008.

James Murdoch has consistently stood by his testimony and News Corp., where he is deputy chief operating officer, said he would attend the hearing.

“James Murdoch is happy to appear in front of the committee again to answer any further questions members might have,” a company spokeswoman said.

The committee also said it would recall longtime Rupert Murdoch aide Les Hinton, who was chairman of News International when the phone hacking took place, and went on to become chief executive of News Corp.’s Dow Jones unit.

Hinton quit Dow Jones in July at the height of the hacking scandal, although he denied any knowledge of alleged hacking.

Whittingdale said the committee would also ask for new evidence from News International’s law firm Farrer’s as well as Mark Lewis, the lawyer who has represented many of the hacking victims.

The mother of a man who was killed in the 2005 Al-Qaeda-inspired attacks on the London transport network meanwhile became the latest person Tuesday to take legal action against the News of the World over allegations of phone hacking.

Lawyers told the High Court in London that Sheila Henry, whose son Christian Small died when a suicide bomber blew up an underground train, launched legal proceedings against News Group Newspapers earlier this week.

Police are believed to have told Henry that her son’s phone was targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the centre of the hacking scandal, in the aftermath of the bombings.

It is understood that she had left messages trying to find out her son’s location on the day in which 52 people died.

Mulcaire and the News of the World’s royal reporter, Clive Goodman, were jailed in 2007 for phone hacking but executives insisted that the practice was confined to the two men.

Mounting evidence to the contrary forced the police to reopen their investigations in January, and the scandal exploded in July when it was claimed that Mulcaire hacked the phone of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler who was later found murdered.

Dowler’s family has not filed any proceedings against News Group Newspapers, it emerged from a High Court hearing on Tuesday.

Since the scandal broke, the News of the World was closed, Hinton and News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks resigned, and more than a dozen people were arrested, including Prime Minister David Cameron’s former media chief, Andy Coulson, a former editor of the paper.

LONDON — The challenge to James Murdoch’s credibility remains serious.

Two former senior staff have repeated assertions that News Corporation’s European boss was made aware, in 2008, of evidence that phone hacking at his U.K. newspapers involved more than just a single rogue reporter. Murdoch has strongly rejected that claim. The truth of the matter remains unclear.

The dispute turns on what was discussed at a meeting between Murdoch and his two accusers — a former editor of The News of The World newspaper and a senior legal executive — more than three years ago. The meeting lasted only about 15 minutes. The outcome was that Murdoch approved a jumbo settlement to an alleged victim of phone hacking. The size of the financial settlement leads some to think that News Corp was buying silence. The key question, however, is whether Murdoch was told that phone hacking was more widespread than the company had previously been maintained.

Murdoch’s accusers say that he was told. But the details are fiddly. Neither Colin Myler, the editor, nor Tom Crone, the lawyer, can recall the exact phrases used in the discussion. So Murdoch can say, and is saying, that he wasn’t explicitly told in plain language that phone hacking went beyond one individual.

The lack of decisive evidence regarding the 2008 meeting does not exonerate Murdoch. It is his word against the word of two others. He still has a case to answer and the allegation that he didn’t act on evidence, and later misled parliament, is very serious. Another grilling is likely.

To his advantage, however, Murdoch’s word has been more articulate and sure-footed to date. His explanation, that a 15 minute meeting could not have included any explicit references to such a serious matter, seems to have had force with at least one of the U.K. lawmakers investigating the affair.

Murdoch’s position at News Corp may be his own hands, given the shareholder control exerted by his family. But he faces a vote at U.K. broadcaster BSkyB where he is chairman. The latest phone-hacking hearings won’t do anything to settle the concerns of independently-minded investors at either company.

News Corp’s senior management is starting to think about what the company might do if James Murdoch stepped aside, sources inside and close to the global media empire said.

With Rupert Murdoch’s younger son under increasing pressure from the phone-hacking scandal enveloping the company, News Corp executives want to be prepared if he wants to “take a breather,” one News Corp source said.

“The company is still trying to operate as if James isn’t going anywhere,” said another high-ranking insider. “But everyone is thinking about what will happen if he has to step aside.”

Through a representative, Rupert Murdoch and News Corp senior management said it was “absolutely not true” the company was thinking about the possibility that James may step aside.

James is known for “doing his own thing,” one News Corp executive noted. A tattooed, ear-pierced record label owner before becoming the last of Rupert’s children to join the company, he now presents the image of a nattily dressed, conservative corporate executive.

“I’m waiting for the moment when he says, ‘What the hell am I doing here, I need a breather,’ ” the source said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if the people who are speaking to him and watching him aren’t wondering if the time has come for him to drop the (corporate) act.”

A third source close to the Murdoch family added, “There needs to be some kind of separation for James from this issue before he can run the company more broadly.”

James Murdoch is News Corp’s deputy chief operating officer and chief executive of News International, which oversees the company’s European and Asian businesses.

Last week, during a conference call to discuss News Corp’s earnings, Rupert Murdoch said in response to a question about any near-term succession that Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey “is my partner, and if anything happened to me I’m sure he’ll get it immediately, if I went under a bus.” He added: “But Chase and I have full confidence in James.”

Three sources pointed to that comment as evidence that News Corp was at least considering life without James.

The sources asked not be identified because of the sensitive nature of the matter.

News Corp remains insistent that James Murdoch will retain his current position and is the front runner to succeed his father in the long term.

Plans are still in place for James to relocate to New York early next year.

But the first News Corp insider characterized the move to New York as an attempt by the company to remove him from the line of fire in the UK, not as a logical step in his ascension.

The hacking scandal, which led to the closure of News Corp’s News of the World newspaper, was thrust back into headlines on Monday after UK authorities publicized a letter by fired News of the World reporter Clive Goodman accusing senior executives of knowing about phone hacking by the paper.

The letter was written four years ago by Goodman as an appeal to News Corp’s then head of human resources, Daniel Cloke, against his dismissal from the tabloid. Goodman had been fired after being accused of phone hacking.

Goodman, a former royal reporter at News of the World, said in the letter that the practice of hacking had been openly discussed until then-editor Andy Coulson banned any reference to it.

Until earlier this year, News of the World’s parent company News International, a unit of News Corp, had maintained that Goodman was a “rogue reporter” acting on his own. Goodman spent four months in jail in 2007 for hacking.

James Murdoch, who took charge of News International shortly after Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire went to jail, has repeatedly claimed that he only learned recently that phone hacking by the newspaper had gone beyond those two individuals.

On Thursday, however, James Desborough, a former Hollywood reporter for News of the World, was arrested on suspicion of phone-hacking, the 13th arrest made as part of the investigation in the scandal.

The Parliamentary committee overseeing the phone hacking investigation has said it plans to question additional News Corp executives next month, and there is speculation that James Murdoch will be called back to give additional testimony.

“Legally, it’s clear this stuff has got to get sorted with him,” said a third source involved with the company.

“His position does appear to be getting weaker,” one investor in BSkyB, where James is chairman, told Reuters, though he added that he was not aware of any institutional pressure for action to remove Murdoch from his role.

Even if James was pressured into leaving News Corp, two of the sources said the departure would not likely be permanent.

“Even if he did step out of the spotlight for a while, that wouldn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t come back when things are quieter,” said another source who asked not to be named because of a relationship with the family.

Murdoch’s children have moved in and out of the company at various times. Elisabeth Murdoch, Rupert’s daughter, recently reemerged when News Corp bought her company, Shine Group, and her father has expressed his desire to bring eldest son Lachlan back into the company’s fold. Lachlan, who once held the deputy COO position now held by James, left News Corp in 2005.

Two of the sources said that when Lachlan was in London a few weeks ago helping his father and brother prepare for their appearance in Parliament, Rupert again asked him if he would accept a position in the company.

Lachlan declined, the sources said.

“He’s happy where he is,” one of the sources said. Lachlan Murdoch owns an Australian investment firm called Illyria. He is also interim chief executive of Australian television company Ten Network Holdings.

One of the sources even thought the scandal could end up helping James in the long run. This source said that James was a forward-thinking executive with a lot of credibility in the business world, and that the strong performance of News Corp’s Indian and German assets, along with BSkyB, Sky Italia and the Times newspaper’s digital strategy, is owed to him.

“When he gets through this he will be a better executive and a better candidate for CEO. He will have been battle-tested like his father,” the source said.

Ultimately, James’ fate rests in the hands of his father.

“There’s only one decision maker, of course, and he is often willing to hold his course against public opinion,” said one of the sources close to the family, referring to Murdoch senior.

Though the Murdoch patriarch is loath to bow to public opinion, he has already been forced to sacrifice two of his closest executives, Les Hinton and Rebekah Brooks, as a result of the phone hacking scandal.

LONDON — Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective jailed in 2007 for phone-hacking for the News of the World, is suing the tabloid’s parent company, News International, for ceasing to pay his legal fees.

“We confirm we have received legal action from Glenn Mulcaire,” said a spokeswoman for News International, the British newspaper arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

News International had paid more than US$395,000 in legal fees for Mulcaire since late last year, when celebrities and politicians began suing News International and Mulcaire for intercepting their voicemails.

The company stopped paying his legal fees on July 20, after News Corp executive James Murdoch told a parliamentary committee he was surprised that News International was footing the bill.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/phone-hacking-private-investigator-mulcaire-sues-news-international/feed3stdGlenn Mulcaire arrives at the Old Bailey court in central London on January 26, 2007.New evidence points to cover-up at News of the Worldhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/new-evidence-points-to-cover-up-at-news-of-the-world
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/new-evidence-points-to-cover-up-at-news-of-the-world#respondWed, 17 Aug 2011 19:07:21 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=88174

By Kate Holton and Georgina Prodhan

LONDON — New evidence of hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World points to a four-year cover-up by the company, and intensifies focus on Prime Minister David Cameron’s judgement in hiring an ex-editor who may now face criminal prosecution.

A letter written in 2007 by ex-royal reporter Clive Goodman says former editor Andy Coulson, who went on to become Cameron’s spokesman, banned talk in editorial meetings of phone-hacking but not the practice itself, which Goodman said was common.

If true, Goodman’s allegations would mean that Coulson lied not only to Britain’s parliament but also under oath as a witness in a 2010 criminal trial, when he repeatedly denied that there was a culture of phone-hacking at the News of the World.

It would also imply that many more senior figures at the News of the World knew about the illegal news gathering practice, casting doubt on repeated statements of ignorance by executives.

The scandal has already caused the resignation of several company executives and two of Britain’s top policemen, and forced Murdoch to shut down the News of the World and drop a cherished US$12-billion bid for pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB.

The Goodman letter also spells political trouble for Cameron, who hired Coulson as his director of communications in 2007, four months after his resignation from the News of the World.

The prime minister has said he wanted to give Coulson a second chance and that they became friends. However, last month he said he regretted the appointment and would offer a “profound apology” if Coulson turned out to have lied.

Cameron is currently fighting a moral crusade against rioters who swept parts of the country last week.

Professor Jonathan Tonge, politics professor at Liverpool University, says Cameron’s efforts to hire Coulson as a “man of the people” to counterbalance the many privileged members of his Conservative government, had backfired.

“There’s always the argument: Does the average man and woman in the street care about all this?” he says.

“But an image is created of a government that at its margins had some shady characters. People don’t want to be preached at by a Conservative government when some of their appointments have been from what you might call, not the moral high ground of society.”

The emergence of Goodman’s letter is the latest twist in the deepening scandal, which saw the former tabloid reporter sentenced to four months in jail for hacking in 2007. Until earlier this year, the News of the World’s parent company News International, a unit of News Corp , maintained he was a “rogue reporter” acting on his own.

“What we’re starting to see appears to be the unravelling of a cover-up,” says Amanda Ball, senior lecturer in media law at Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism.

James Murdoch, the News Corp executive who took charge of News International shortly after Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire went to jail, has also repeatedly denied he knew until recently that hacking went beyond Goodman and Mulcaire.

Goodman’s letter, published on Tuesday by a British parliamentary committee investigating the phone-hacking, was not intended for publication but was sent to News International executives as part of an appeal against his dismissal.

“This practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference, until explicit reference to it was banned by the Editor,” Goodman wrote. “Other members of staff were carrying out the same illegal procedures.”

In the letter, he also complained that Coulson and News International’s then-top lawyer Tom Crone had not honoured a pledge to give him his job back as long as he did not implicate anyone else during his trial.

The letter, which was censored in places to obscure names of individuals, was sent to News International’s then-human resources director Daniel Cloke, ex-Executive Chairman Les Hinton, and ex-News of the World Managing Editor Stuart Kuttner.

James Murdoch also submitted Goodman’s letter as part of his evidence to the committee, but removed mention of Coulson, the daily editorial meetings and the job promise.

“That is very telling,” said McDermott.

Hinton, who told parliament four days after receiving the letter that he had not seen any evidence to suggest the hacking involved anyone else, went on to become chief executive of News Corp’s Dow Jones but resigned last month.

Kuttner was arrested two weeks ago, while Cloke now works for British telecoms operator Vodafone .

“If I was doing crisis management for News International, I would be painting Goodman as a bitter man, but that’s not so easy when you look at when the letter was written and who the intended audience was,” says media law professor Ball.

“He could have said all this in court but he didn’t. All he wanted was his job back.” Murdoch is likely to be recalled by the committee to give further evidence in October.

His questioning has centred on the so-called “for Neville” email containing transcripts of hacked voicemails, which shows the hacking went beyond Goodman — and whether he knew of its existence when he approved a large payoff to a hacking victim.

He has maintained that he did not, but that has been contradicted by News International’s former legal chief Tom Crone and the News of the World’s last editor Colin Myler, who have said they made him aware of the email in 2008.

“They have shown phenomenal arrogance,” says Peter Burden, author of a 2008 book on the News of the world.

“There’s a sense that they just thought that if they toughed it out and paid people off, like Gordon Taylor — and Goodman was also paid a large amount of money to shut him up — that they thought they could keep a lid on it.”

Coulson, who resigned from the News of the World on the day that Goodman and Mulcaire were sentenced to jail, was arrested last month on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and suspicion of corruption.

He had previously been interviewed by police in November and is due to appear before police again in October.

Separately, Scottish police have begun a preliminary investigation into evidence given by witnesses including Coulson at the 2010 perjury trial of Scottish politician Tommy Sheridan on suspicion that the witnesses themselves committed perjury.

In addition to denying knowledge at the time of phone-hacking — of which Sheridan claims to have been a victim — Coulson told the trial he had no knowledge of any payments made by the News of the World to police for tip-offs.

Emails since obtained by the police appear to show Coulson authorising such payments to the police while he was editor.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/new-evidence-points-to-cover-up-at-news-of-the-world/feed0stdNews Corp Chief Executive and Chairman Rupert Murdoch appears before a parliamentary committee on phone hacking at Portcullis House in London July 19, 2011. Murdoch and his son James apologised to the British parliament on Tuesday over a hacking scandal that has engulfed News Corp , but the veteran media mogul denied he was ultimately responsible for "this fiasco."Phone hacking was openly discussed at News of the World: former reporterhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/phone-hacking-was-openly-discussed-at-news-of-the-world-former-reporter
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/phone-hacking-was-openly-discussed-at-news-of-the-world-former-reporter#commentsTue, 16 Aug 2011 12:55:17 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=87863

LONDON — Phone hacking was widely discussed at editorial meetings at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, the reporter who was blamed as the sole culprit said in a letter which threatened to undermine repeated denials by senior News Corp executives.

In a letter written four years ago and published by the Guardian on Tuesday, the former Royal reporter Clive Goodman said the practice of hacking was openly discussed until the then editor Andy Coulson banned it.

Coulson, who had repeatedly denied all knowledge of the practice, went on to become the official spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron, a move which dragged the affair into the political arena and forced the government to turn on Rupert Murdoch after years of courting his favour.

Goodman, who was jailed in 2007 along with private detective Glenn Mulcaire, said he had been told he could keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the newspaper.

Related

The committee investigating the hacking scandal, which is expected to publish the letter later, said on Tuesday it would likely recall James Murdoch to give further evidence after receiving the Goodman letter and statements from other parties which contradicted his previous testimony.

“When we have the further information that we are seeking, I think it is very likely that we will want to put those points to James Murdoch,” the head of the committee, John Whittingdale, told reporters.

Parliamentarian Tom Watson, the most dogged MP to question Murdoch, told reporters earlier in the day that the new evidence contained “devastating revalations” which would raise questions for the company in general.

Allegations of widespread hacking at News Corp’s British newspaper arm, and in particular reports that journalists had used investigators to hack in to the voicemails of murder victims, sparked an uproar in Britain that dominated global headlines for almost the whole of July.

It forced the company to close the 168-year-old paper, drop its most important acquisition in decades — the US$12-billion purchase of BSkyB — and accept the resignation of two of its most senior newspaper executives.

Two of Britain’s most senior police officers also quit over their failure to properly investigate the scandal and 12 people have since been arrested.

Two former News of the World colleagues had previously contradicted information that James Murdoch gave in July.

Whittingdale, who said differences remained over the accounts of what had happened at the newspaper, said the committee was unlikely to recall 80-year-old Rupert Murdoch.

James and his father Rupert appeared before the committee on July 19 and were pressed to explain their understanding of phone-hacking and payments made to the police by the tabloid.

The 38-year-old News Corp deputy chief operating officer has already said he stands by his testimony.

The issue in dispute is how much James Murdoch knew about the hacking, in particular the scale of the problem, and whether he was involved in a cover up.

Murdoch said he had not been in possession of all the facts when he approved a large payout in 2008 to English soccer executive Gordon Taylor, who had his phone hacked.

Critics have argued the size of the payout, which was 10 times the record amount awarded in a privacy case at the time, was intended to buy Taylor’s silence.

However Tom Crone, News International’s former top legal officer, and Colin Myler, editor of the News of the World until it was shut down in July, have disputed this, saying they had previously shown Murdoch a 2005 email which suggested that the problem was more widespread.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/phone-hacking-was-openly-discussed-at-news-of-the-world-former-reporter/feed1stdThis file picture taken on August 16, 2006, shows former royal editor for Britain's News of the World newspaper, Clive Goodman leaving the City of Westminster Magistrates Court, in London.